


How To Make Boys Next Door Out of Assholes

by nicholas_de_vilance



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, Partial Insanity, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Scars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 21:18:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3624600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicholas_de_vilance/pseuds/nicholas_de_vilance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of one-shots, drabbles and other...things related to Daryl and my fiancee's OC, Izzie.  More tags to be added with chapters and rating subject to go up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I wasn't peeping, it was just...there...

**Author's Note:**

> Izzie can be found on tumblr at the url tattoosandmusclecars
> 
> This series of drabbles and shit stems from an rp my fiancee and I started up over text message. I love her character so much that I had to expand on it. The AU is that Daryl and Merle went North when they found out that Atlanta was a bust. Never ended up at the campsite. After Merle got bit, Daryl just kept going North. He made it all the way to Philly before he ran out of gas.

“So…I don’t want you to think I’m a perve or anything…”

Daryl looked up, broken from his thoughts.  Izzie was standing above him, holding out an open can labeled “green beans.”  The statement was delivered warily and Daryl didn’t know how he felt about it coming from her mouth.  She was pussyfooting around something that smelled bad.  “What?” he snapped.  He took the can and scooped up the plastic fork he’d been using the last couple days.

“Well, the shower in here is for chemical spills and shit.  There isn’t a curtain…”

“Yeah, so?”

“Your back…”

Daryl didn’t even get the first spoonful of over-preserved much into his mouth.  Appetite lost, he dropped his spork into the can and set it down beside his injured leg.  “Jus’ cause there ain’t a curtain don’t give you the right to peep…  What about my back?”

Izzie winced as she perched up on a workbench close by.  She couldn’t meet his gaze, probably because she knew it had been wrong to ask—or look, for that matter.  Daryl wished she’d get the hint and just drop it.  It was stupid of him to even take his shirt off the other day, pain must have made him crazy.  He didn’t like to talk about it, and he’d tell her as much if she pressed him.  Then again, if he saw her back all mangled up with scars, he’d want to know too.  The difference was, he wouldn’t ask.

“Sorry...just…  Never mind.”

“Thanks,” Daryl grumbled, rubbing tenderly at the area just above his banged up knee.  It was healing alright, but it still hurt something fierce.

Izzie focused on her meal, raven curls falling over her face, something she could hide behind.  Her feet swung idly, back and forth above the concrete floor.  Every bit tingled on her tongue, spiced with the nagging burn of her curiosity.  It really wasn’t her business, and it had been rude to ask—she knew that.  Daryl had stumbled in here like two days ago—approximately.  He was a complete stranger.  He definitely didn’t owe her an explanation for some very old scar tissue.  However, that didn’t stop her wanting badly to know.

“Last night, you talked in your sleep,” she went on, and though she hadn’t just implied that she would let it go.

Daryl sighed, in too much pain, too exhausted to be ashamed.  “Yeah, I do that sometimes,” he muttered.  “Lemme guess: ‘Daddy, no.  Please not the belt, Daddy.’?  Somethin’ like that?”

Again, Izzie stared deeply into her canned corn.  It was a bad idea to bring it up, kind of like pulling a tooth.  She felt like a jackass, just as much as she needed the tooth out.  “Yeah…” her voice was barely there.

“Didn’t ever hear that curiosity killed the cat?”  Daryl leaned hi head back against the door of her Plymouth Barracuda and closed his eyes.

After a beat, he heard her slide down from the workbench, jeans rasping over the old, smooth sheet metal.  “Of course,” she conceded softly.  “That’s only half the saying, though.”  Izzie stepped over and took a seat on the floor across from him.  “It goes: ‘curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.’”

“No shit.  Must be  your motto ‘er somethin’.”

Despite herself, Izzie smiled.  “It’s done me pretty well so far.”

“Like hell,” Daryl hissed, fixing her with a pointed, harsh glare.  “Oh yeah, you’re peachy keen, locked up in a fuckin' garage for nigh on a month now, too chicken shit to go on a supply run so you don’t starve to death.  You don’t even know how to use a gun.  Shoulda taken my chances on the street with the Walkers!”

In return, Izzie just started, slightly dazed and offended, entirely terrified of being call out on her shit.  “You’re an asshole.”

“And you’re a nosy bitch,” Daryl shot back, indignant.

“Eat your fucking green beans.”

“Ain’t hungry.”

At that, Izzie put her can down.  She glared over at him.  “Okay, sorry I pried, but you’re being an ungrateful prick.  I could have left your pretty ass out there.  Maybe I should have…if I’d know you were gonna sit here and waste what little food I have left.”

“No one asked you to fucking feed me!”  Daryl roared.  He knew he shouldn’t be that loud after dark, but she was pushing all of his buttons right now.  Thinking about his old man did that to him, fill him with righteous, unrelenting anger.  He got that from Merle.  “Should jus’ left me out there.  Ignored the screams like you’ve been doin’ for weeks.  You ain’t got no duty to me.  Fuck you!  Fuck you and you’re goddamned green beans.  Leave me the fuck alone!”

For a moment, Izzie sat very still.  He was being too loud.  She listened carefully for the sounds of the dead approaching to scratch at her tiny shop windows.  She was fairly certain that the Walkers couldn’t get in, but why attract them?  Part of her wanted to be so pissed off at this stupid hick bastard for not keeping his voice down.  There was no point, though, and no room for anger.  She’s been alone.  Since the outbreak occurred—since the radio broadcasts stopped and her phone finally died—she’s been alone, holed up in her shop like a scared rat while she had no idea what happened to her family.  Alone had driven her crazy.  Alone had made her weak-minded and stupid enough to take in a complete stranger in the middle of the apocalypse.  Perhaps Alone was why, when she finally had someone here, a real, living, breathing person, she wanted to give him everything, take care of him, and know everything about him.  The startling truth kept forcing its way into her mind.  In this world—what the world had become—every man for himself.

“Fine,” she said.  Her voice was more tired and sad than cold the way she wanted.  She didn’t care.  “You wanna be alone, fine.  I’ll leave you alone.

Getting up, she collected her can and fork and wandered to the other side of the shop, around the car Daryl was leaning against.  He was to look, see where she was going.  He still didn’t have a good grasp on the layout of this place.  He couldn’t twist right to watch her go, just enough to get a fleeting glimpse of her perfectly-shaped ass wrapped in those tight, blue jeans.  Frowning, he listened to her footsteps, quick and angry, while still ringing with a slow, forlorn cadence.  Daryl’s heartbeat sped up a little.  Some way away, apparently another car, there was the sound of a car door opening.  Izzie got in, and she slammed the door shut.

Daryl lay back, head pressed hard into the metal door, eyes squeezed tightly shut.  There was not more sound, no Walkers at the door, no girl bustling around to tend to him.  It was better that was.  She didn’t owe him anything, best not to get attached.  As soon as his leg healed, he was out of there, so he embraced the quiet.  The quiet was good, assurance of solitude, safety.  It gave him space to clear his head and calm down.  The quiet was good.

Yet, the silence hurt like hell.


	2. Counting the days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Izzie's introspective on the stranger that stumbled into her garage and the point of existence. 630 words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is set before the last one, but I wrote it after. I'm posting these in the order I write them.

It was something like thirty-five days and twelve hours since the Outbreak had trapped Izzie in her auto shop.  The radio broadcasts stopped twelve days and nineteen hours ago.  There was nothing but dead air on every station.  Three hours ago, Daryl started banging on the roll door.  His leg was badly bruised, probably sprained, maybe even broken.  Once she told him the shop’s emergency shower still ran, however, he insisted on using it.  He limped his pathetic way over, stripped off his clothes by himself and pumped out the water by himself.  Izzie could hear him making pained grunts and groans every time he moved.  Still, the stubborn man insisted on doing everything himself.  She didn’t know him, but she would help if he let her.  After what happened outside, Izzie felt like humans needed all the help they could conjure these days.

She sat in her car, laying against the back door.  She was going her best not to look over her shoulder at the naked man currently showering in her shop.  After a month, cooped up in here, with no human company whatsoever, she was so tempted.  She wanted to know if she still remembered what a naked man looked like.  More than that, she had this fantasy running through her head.  It had been…so long that she’d forgotten since she’d last had sex, so her imagination was running wild.

She saw herself watching him, peering over, taking everything in.  In her head, he was the epitome of masculinity, cut muscles, hard body.  She watched him run the damp shop rag over his skin, scraping away the grime and blood and unmentionables.  Underneath it all, his skin would be tan and supple, he might have a tattoo somewhere.  He would see her watching and despite his detached, shy demeanor, he would smirk.  She would get out of her car at a beckoning crook of his finger, and then…

Izzie looked.  She’d been so lost in her little fantasy, she’d lost track of reality.  Her head turned without conscious thought, and she immediately regretted it.  At the far end of the shop, she could see him.  His entire back was framed by the car window and the angle of the workbench between them.  Her perspective was a little weird, but Izzie could still see everything she needed for her arousal to fade away into cold anxiety.

Daryl did have a tattoo.  Izzie couldn’t make out what it was, but the whole piece was just big enough to cover the upper right part of his back.  That wasn’t what had Izzie’s attention, though.  She could see scars, old ones.  Long streaks of darker flesh ran in an asymmetrical mass over his pale, pale skin.  They were thick and frightening, like welts or lash marks or something.

Abruptly, Izzie spun back round.  She shouldn’t have looked.  Not only was it rude, it was none of her damn business.  This guy was a complete stranger.  Izzie couldn’t begin to guess at the things he’d seen—or done—just in the last thirty days, let alone a lifetime.  In fact, she could only hope that he wasn’t planning to kill her once she stopped being useful to him.  Hell, was she even useful to begin with?

Izzie heard the water stop, and Daryl didn’t pump it again, so he must have been done.  She stayed still and quiet, waiting until the muffled sounds of pained grunts and rustling fabric ebbed.  It occurred to her quite suddenly that she didn’t know what to do.  Before she knew it, there were tears running down her face, she was so scare her body shook.  Arms wrapped tight around herself, Izzie sat in the backseat of her Barracuda and wept.


End file.
